I am an artist and researcher whose work is located in (extra)ordinary places driven by processes of immersive social engagement, informed by materials to hand, enacted routines and knowledge practices. I have an abiding interest in how institutions intersect with other institutions and communities. This interest led to a doctoral inquiry (Mis)Interpreting Arts & Health: What (Else) Can An Arts Practice Do? (2009- 2015). This research considered how the encounter of healthcare, art and academic institutions had led to an appropriation of art practice as clinical intervention. It sought to provide an orientation for these extra-gallery art practices when unburdened of clinical expectation. This is an enduring area of interest for me as the line between art and not art is constantly (re)negotiated. I am currently developing a project that will focus on the art institution (West Cork Arts Centre) and it’s adjacent local community, based at an urban wilderness area called the Rock. Please see www.sheelaghbroderick.com

ABSTRACT

This research project concerns arts practices in healthcare settings and the encounter between artist, researcher, healthcare professional and institution. Rather than understanding arts practices as either therapeutic or recreational services, this research asks instead, what (else) can an arts practice do? This is accomplished by connecting two previously separate bodies of scholarship; health sociology and an art criticism of expanded arts practices. By connecting these bodies of scholarship, this inquiry offers a new conceptual language and orientation for arts and health practitioners distinct from the evidence-based practice model most prevalent in academic and professional discourses and consequently establishes a transdisciplinary trajectory for artistic and research practices. Navigating between polemical art critical discourses and appropriating health discourses the research seeks to follow a generative path, to create a position of affirmation, where art encounters can be understood in the way they produce affects, defined by how they connect and transform, by what they do. Such an approach addresses a lacuna in scholarship created by the almost exclusive academic interest in impact studies and the sparseness of associated critical writing. The research inquiry then makes a contribution to knowledge of relevance to artists, researchers, healthcare professionals and institutions because it offers an expanded conceptual vocabulary and scope for art practices in healthcare settings.